Once there was a little boy named Miles, from a small town in Kansas. He grew up knowing he was destined to shine. The differences he used to celebrate were now also the qualities which alienated him from his peers. Miles always knew there was something within him which did not mirror the society he was being raised in and it wasn’t until his first day of middle school that he discovered those things, the small sparkles that contributed to his overall shine, made people weaponize their insecurity and project their pain onto him.

The night after his first day of class, Miles lied in bed looking out his window to the vast abyss of stars in the expansive Kansas sky. As he lied wondering why he was now the target of harassment due to shining passions, personality traits, and modes of expression, he began to ache with loneliness. As the night got darker, and the stars got brighter, he whispered under his breath a prayer to the universe pleading, “Please. Please, Universe, make me the biggest star the world will ever know so I can get far far away from this place.” His eyes begin to get heavy and he begins to fall asleep.

When Miles wakes up, he seems to be alone. He goes to make breakfast and finds only one box of cereal in an otherwise empty cupboard. The box reads, “The World! All the nutrients to promote the shine of a young growing star!” Miles tilts his head, raises an eyebrow, and shrugs before pouring himself a bowl of this cereal. As he fills his bowl and begins eating, his breakfast begins to glow and his cereal transforms into thousands of tiny stars before his very eyes. Confused, and amazed, he continues to finish every last drop of the stars, and the now radiant milk left behind by the celestial debris.

After finishing his breakfast, Miles begins to metamorphize, as he begins to feel what can only be described as an ethereal radiance taking control of his being. He starts to turn golden, like the stars he had devoured. In a moment of fear, he wonders if he made the right choice to eat up every star from “The World”, but before he knows it, Miles has been completely engulfed by this golden glow from head to toe. Just as he finds solace in this new found radiance, the transformation evolves through a spectrum of color. He begins to feel the loving hues of pink drape along his cheekbones and neck, alongside shades of blue that calmly cascade across his forehead. Momentarily, he experiences the emotional embrace of every color in the universe. In his hour of colorful passion, a white light begins to radiate from the center of his face and the rainbow begins to alter.

As Miles takes a deep breath in an attempt to take in all that he is experiencing, he opens his eyes to what he has now become, a glowing light of galactic beauty. What was once a beautifully chaotic sea of color, has now settled into a refined confidence beaming shades of the gold from the stars, the rouge of the roses, the lavender of the mountains, and the sea foam of the ocean. Miles invites the beauty from all that the Universe has to offer into his being as he begins to take shape.

As Miles inhabits this new form of being, he is introduced to a nebulous world. He slowly progresses through a beautiful haze of amorphous gold and ultraviolet clouds before finally settling into space where he’s now become what he’s always been, a star.